Over at the mailbag, Mike asks a trading question that is almost
as old as Rotisserie League Baseball itself:
I've been offered a trade that I don't know how to evaluate, even after having played roto for a long time. When should I want to trade for a very good player at what I think is a fair price?
In
keeper leagues, every owner should have the same goal during the offseason:
adding raw value to his team so he can put himself in the strongest position
possible at his auction. In serious leagues, you're not going to be able to trade a $20
player with a $10 salary for a $15 player with a $12 salary during the
offseason. What's more likely is that the $4 freeze you think is worth $4 is
going to get traded to the owner who has a $5 freeze you think is worth $8.
What's even more likely is that your differences of opinion are going to be incremental and you will fail to make a trade.
There
are times where you might want to make a trade where you take a value
hit. You don't want to take too big
of a hit, but if you're losing a little value in trades like the following
deals, you might be better off.
1)
Categorical Need
During
the regular season, this is an easy one to figure out...particularly midyear
when it starts becoming clear where your team excels and where it is deficient.
In the winter, it takes a combination of planning and forward thinking to decide
whether or not a trade like this is right for you.
The
"scarce" categories are the ones where you might do something like
this. If it appears that your auction is only going to have three closers
available, you might trade an undervalued keeper for a closer at a par price.
You might also decide not to make the trade, see what happens in the auction,
and either buy a closer or chuck the category overboard. How much you might
overpay in the offseason depends a lot on how much you think you would have to
overpay in the auction. If categorical scarcity historically pushes owners
to pay $4-5 over inflation for a closer, overpaying by $1-2 might make sense.
Of
course, you might also just want to dump the scarce category entirely. Speaking
of which...
2)
Category Dumping
You
have a terrible freeze list and know that even with the best value auction you've
ever had you're still probably going to finish sixth at best. You don't want to
just wind up dumping in June but suspect that this is what's going to happen
unless you're the luckiest guy in the history of Rotisserie. What do you do?
Depending
on how your freezes are stacked, you might decide to dump one or two
categories. If a $23 Jose Bautista is your only power hitter worth keeping and
you have a decent core of base stealers, you might try to trade Bautista and
opt for a no power strategy. If you have a market value closer but weak
pitching and a lot of bats, you might flip that closer and go with a cheap-o
pitching strategy.
Making
trades like this can be advantageous because it is typically less obvious to
your opponents what exactly it is you are doing. Most owners don't expect you
to trade a category away in its entirety, or trade a $23 Bautista for a $5
Alexi Casilla. The best thing about this tactic is it can lead to owners
reaching out to you thinking that you're making a run of poor trades...as
opposed to laying the foundation in March for a successful auction.
3)
Trading for the Future
If
category dumping isn't for you, you might want to try and catch lightning in a
bottle before your auction and grab some futures. I'm not talking about blue chip studs like Wil Myers
who their owners won't trade in a million years, but rather second tier farm
players that might or might not be freezes at $10 and don't have the top-tier
prospect pedigree. Think players like Josh Reddick and Kyle Seager entering
last season. They probably weren't keeps at $10, but if you froze them at those
prices you not only wound up with good freezes for 2013 but potential dump
chips in 2012 as well.
Before
you get all excited about trying this strategy and preparing for your Yoo Hoo
shower this coming October, there are a couple of important points to keep in
mind. First, while Reddick and Seager are terrific examples of non-blue chip
prospects that worked out, there are also a lot of these types of players that
don't make it. This is a risky strategy that you should only try if you're
desperate. Second, in some leagues owners guard their potential dump chips so
closely that you might not be able to trade for a borderline young player under
any circumstances.
4)
Inflation Hedges
If
you did dump and dumped well, chances are that you have a dynamite freeze list.
If you do have a problem, it's that even with all of your great freezes, you
have about $180-190 to spend in an inflation-heavy auction. If you don't take
any action to mitigate this, the joy of dumping into a perfect team will be
shattered by the realities of draft inflation. Suddenly, that $15 Giancarlo
Stanton and that $10 Bryce Harper don't look as good as they once did.
One
way to combat this is by trading for a player or two at par prices. You don't
want to trade the likes of Giancarlo or Bryce for these par players. Instead, think
about the freezes you have that are cheap and $3-5 undervalued. Flipping a $6
David DeJesus for a $38 David Wright might seem counterintuitive, but Wright's
inflation value in some leagues will be in the neighborhood of $38, and keeping
Wright instead of DeJesus will take $32 out of the equation for you an Auction
Day. With 30% inflation, that $32 is only buying you $24-25 worth of stats.
Unless DeJesus is a $7 bargain, you might have a better deal on your hands than
you thought.
All
of these scenarios should be viewed as exceptions, not norms. If every trade
you make siphons value away from your freezes, you are setting yourself up for
an unsuccessful auction and a losing season. However, there are times where
winning the value portion of a trade isn't necessary depending on your
circumstances.
